1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to cellular telephony; and, more particularly, to cellular telephony system access.
2. Related Art
Cellular phones (mobile phones, as they are known in few regions) are now a part of most human lives and have become a necessity of rather than a luxury as they once were. A few of the reasons for such is based upon the human need to communicate with others that arises from the needs of social networking, businesses, call conferencing, news receipt, business/stock market news and information gathering, emailing, and emergency calls. Such services and uses are now available in a cost effective manner by which anyone can accomplish the abovementioned tasks, simply by using a cellular phone handset.
Cellular phone handset costs have come down consistently over time because of consistently growing demands for them, reduced component and manufacturing costs, and competition between the manufacturers themselves for users. Some cellular phone operators service tens of millions of cellular phone handsets and provide service worldwide, while some cellular phone operators provide regional service. In other words, some operators service their subscribed cellular phone handsets in only one or more cities (or similarly, few other nearby localities), others service subscribed cellular handsets in many cities (and equally covering a larger nearby localities), some nationally, and still other internationally. Hence, there is a large variance in each of the operator's coverage characteristics of their client cellular phone handsets. Every one of these operator's coverage characteristics also include a great deal of non-coverage pockets where they cannot provide services to their clients.
Considering the abovementioned variance problem from the perspective of the users of these cellular phone handsets, in addition to their home service providers (operators), they also have to be dependent upon many other roaming service providers (operators), while they are on the move. The call charges of these roaming service providers are typically, unreasonably high; often in terms of many multiples of local phone call charges, even when they are making calls locally (within the roaming cities or localities).
Neither the service providers providing roaming service nor the home service providers (nor the users of the cellular phone handsets) stand to benefit in these roaming scenarios. This is because the roaming service providers make it a priority to service only their more permanent clients while the home service providers simply have no reason to expand their service infrastructures in those roaming regions because of many of their own reasons. Hence, the users of the cellular phone handsets end up having to bear these unreasonably high costs.
These and other limitations and deficiencies associated with the related art may be more fully appreciated by those skilled in the art after comparing such related art with various aspects of the present invention as set forth herein with reference to the figures.